I cut in line, I bled to death. When I got to you there was nothing left.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Advice when buying goods from unknown brands.

I have this rule when it comes to buy products by unknown brands. Basically I just look at the packaging and manual first. If there are spelling mistakes in either then I don't buy it.

The rational is simple. If a company can't even afford to do a spell check (or hire someone overseas with a half decent command of English to do it) on their documentation or packaging before they sell the product then that's basically a huge ass sign of how much time they invest in Quality Control. This rule has saved me quite a bit of cash over the years, but then a couple of weeks ago I went against it.

I was at Sembawang Music Centre at Parkway Parade 3 weeks ago and I saw this movie Rashamon by Akira Kurosawa, a Japanese director of whom I been a huge fan of ever since I saw his movies on Arts Central like 5 years ago. It was selling for only 10 dollars so I was gonna get it but then the guy told me I could get a box set with 17 of the movies for 50 bucks which seems to make a lot of business sense so I gladly said yes.

However, one look at the packaging and I started to have my doubts. The text in the packaging was riddled with really bad grammar and spelling mistakes ("Occidental called who Akira Kurosawa's was mikado.."). But in the end I decided that they wasn't much they could do wrong with mastering a DVD, so I bought it.

Cut to yesterday. I bought Pringle's chips and a bottle of Diet Coke during lunch time and popped in the first DVD in my player to watch. It was Rashomon, one of his earlier and most acclaimed movies, and I was looking forward to it. 30 minutes into the movie, the screen froze. Forwarding/playing it on my PC didn't help, basically the remaining 6 chapters were inaccessible. You can imagine my frustration.

Anyway I just called the store where I bought the DVD from and he was kind enough to immediately offer to replace it for me even though I didn't have a receipt. He told me that his store ran out of the box sets but he will contact me as soon as he gets another one from another outlet. Pretty cool service for once.